This dissertation is a multi-part inquiry into the question, what could liberatory mathematics teaching and learning be? It works from an understanding of liberation as plural, collective, sociohistorically situated, radically imaginative, and practicable in the here and now (Combahee River Collective, in Taylor, 2017; Escobar, 2015; G. Gutiérrez, 1973/1988; Kelley, 2002; Walcott, 2021). Rather than pursue final or totalizing answers, the dissertation engages a question that holds infinite multiplicities (Martin et al., 2019). It includes three studies, two of which foreground the perspectives of K–12 educators; the third is an analysis of extant scholarship. All three center educational research and practice with explicit commitments to justice and liberation.
The first study profiles an elementary educator’s reflections on teaching across school disciplines. Drawing on ethnographic data from a year-long collaboration, including observations, interviews, and video-based reflection conversations, the analysis explores a rift (Booker & Goldman, 2016) that this teacher experienced between liberatory pedagogy and school mathematics. The paper describes key facets of her liberatory praxis, which developed largely in the humanities, and considers challenges and possibilities of liberatory teaching and learning in mathematics.
The second study is an integrative analysis (Torraco, 2016) of scholarship that takes critical perspectives on mathematics education. The paper brings extant literature from mathematics education and the learning sciences into conversation with ideas from Warren, Vossoughi, Rosebery, Bang, and Taylor’s (2020) chapter, “Multiple Ways of Knowing: Re-imagining Disciplinary Learning.” Warren and colleagues call educators and researchers across fields to pursue disciplinary learning that liberates from the EuroWestern normativity of academic disciplines and K–12 schooling. The paper highlights contributions, limitations, and future possibilities of critical mathematics education scholarship in light of this call.
The third study is an analysis of conversations with six mathematics educators—spanning grade levels, roles, and institutional settings—who centered commitments to justice and liberation in their teaching. In one-on-one conversations, we discussed the educational histories, teaching experiences, and political values that shaped their praxis. The paper synthesizes themes across their accounts of liberatory mathematics teaching and learning, highlighting the prefigurative orientation these educators brought to pedagogy as they visioned and practiced freedom within systems that were far from liberatory (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Boggs, 1977; Givens, 2021a).
Across the studies, educators and researchers offer incisive critiques of mathematics education as a force for sociohistorical injustice and point toward its liberatory potential. Common themes from the three analyses include: a multi-scale political perspective on mathematics education; harm, healing, and social connection in mathematics; learning from life beyond school; and creative inspiration in mathematics. Themes unique to individual studies are: the microrelational work of liberatory pedagogy (Paper 1), turning a critical eye on mathematics as a discipline (Paper 2), and educators examining their own relationships with mathematics (Paper 3). Taken together, the studies suggest that mathematics pedagogy as the practice of freedom (Freire, 1973; hooks, 1994) can—and perhaps must—take multiple forms. These include critically navigating normative systems and seeking radical departures from them.
The dissertation concludes with directions for future inquiry in mathematics education and teacher professional learning, highlighting possibilities for critical collaborative study with educators. / 2025-01-12T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45436 |
| Date | 12 January 2023 |
| Creators | Okun, Ada |
| Contributors | Warren, Beth |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
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